A few key steps help protect your crops through the shipment process. In a recent survey of large growers conducted by Evonik, we asked the biggest challenges associated with getting healthy plants to market. Aside from concerns about weather conditions, the main problems were transportation issues and keeping plants hydrated in transit. There are a multitude of ways to ship plants, from carts to boxes or in sleeves, in pots or bare root and in all stages of growth, from young plants to finished, in your own trucks or in a contracted shipping company’s truck. Throughout all those scenarios, there are some key things growers should keep in mind to keep plants as healthy as possible from the time they leave the greenhouse to the time they get unloaded at their final destination. Planning Ahead There are a couple of actions growers can take before the plant gets loaded onto […]

Hanging baskets make up a good portion of the greenhouse business for peak spring, so it’s vital to have a strong growing program for these products. According to recent USDA statistics, sales of certain types of hanging baskets are up across the 15 states that produce the most floriculture product. The varieties that increased in sales in 2015 over 2014 include begonias, New Guinea impatiens and a category called “other flowering and foliar,” which is good news for including unique varieties rather than petunias and geraniums. Quality From the Beginning There are a couple of keys to a successful hanging basket program, and it all begins with a healthy start and the media mix. That means inspecting plugs and cuttings prior to planting up the mixes. Media can be pre-mixed or mixed onsite by the grower, but it’s important to have the right ingredients. Bobby Barnitz, vice president at Bob’s […]

As restrictions and water availability continue to be a concern, growers have to research other options for conserving their most precious resource. Water has always been a vital resource, considering much of life on Earth — humans, animals and plants — require it to exist. However, water has become an even larger topic of concern as areas in the U.S. begin to experience extreme drought conditions and parts of the world see water resources drying up. Examples in the U.S. include Southern California, where the U.S. Drought Monitor map shows extreme and exceptional drought situations. As summer wanes, we are beginning to see drought situations crop up in Georgia and Massachusetts, as well as abnormally dry weather in other regions of the U.S. Related to drought, a 2014 report from the American Meteorologist Society Journal of Climate projected the Southwest would have an 80% risk of a decade-scale mega-drought in […]

For more than 50 years, PanAmerican Seed® has been creating exceptional flowers and vegetables, providing the highest quality seed to professional greenhouse growers, and helping gardeners around the world plant beauty in their gardens. Built on timeless classics like impatiens, petunias, pansies and snapdragons, the company continues to fine-tune these “bread and butter” products with on-trend colors, impactful performance updates, new seed technologies and production efficiencies, with the goal of improving growers’ profitability. That same commitment has opened the door to unparalleled introduction of cutting edge options like Kabloom™ calibrachoas, Megawatt™ begonias and Fuseables® seed technology.

Greenhouse Grower talked with Mary O’Connor, Global Product Manager for PanAmerican Seed™, about how she chooses those luscious Plug & Play combinations, why she has to be tough on testing them, and what she sees as the future for the combo craze. Q. What do you see as the future for combos? Is it an area you feel will become increasingly popular? O’Connor: Combinations are a very popular item at retail, and sales are still growing. Although colors and styles will change over time, combinations will definitely continue to be a popular category. Most consumers have less time to create their own and can sometimes feel less confident that they will make the right choices and be successful. Shoppers want to spend their money in a wise way, with confidence that what they choose will perform well and bring them joy! It is so helpful to have a beautiful combination ready […]

PanAmerican Seed® raised the curtain on their Plug & Play™ combo program at the Cultivate’16 show to wide acclaim. This fresh and relevant collection is built upon internal and external testing in multiple regions. Trialing in saleable sizes begins at the PanAmerican Seed research greenhouses and in outdoor Summer containers. Then every potential introduction heads out to commercial greenhouses and to real-life gardens. The result is the assurance that every one of the 50-plus Plug & Play combos available today is proven to deliver unstoppable performance from bench to store to garden. Good for growers: Easy, economical production Each Plug & Play combo is created with best-in-class seed annuals and perennials from PanAmerican Seed and sister company, Kieft Seed™. Several of the recipes include known-by-name varieties like Wave® petunias, Kabloom™ calibrachoas and Sorbet® violas, plus assorted All-America Selections perennials. Thanks to the high-quality, cost-effective seed inputs and programmable finish times, […]

In an operating environment like production horticulture that is already pushing new levels of sophistication and complexity, it may seem counterintuitive to consider adding another layer of integrated pest management such as biodiversity to the mix. But, in reality, the integration of diversity in the totality of the business environment is nothing new. Diversity Born From Innovative Thinking In the early part of the 20th century, specialization of worker roles in manufacturing processes was the genesis of the industrial revolution. Businesses realized new levels of productivity, output, cost efficiencies, and unprecedented operational scalability. Moving forward to mid- and late-century technologies, advances in chemistry and materials science created new alternatives in plastics, acrylics, and other light-weight synthetic materials with comparable strengths to metallics and glass. Electronic and computer technologies created new processes for irrigation and environmental controls. All the while, the innovations pushed the requirement for human management of these new […]

For more than 100 years scientists have known that once a plants survives a disease, it is often more resistant to other infections. It’s as if the plant’s immune system has become stronger, and actually, it has. What was not known then was how it worked, and researchers have been working on teasing out the underlying mechanism for decades. Being able to harness plants’ natural ability to defend themselves would give growers new crop protection tools, and indeed, that has already happened. There are two well-known types of induced resistance in plants, although there may be more. These two, systemic acquired resistance (SAR) and induced systemic resistance (ISR) are distinguished by the different ways in which the immune response is elicited. In addition, some plants have a localized, rapid response to invasion by certain insects, fungi or pathogens called the hypersensitive response (HR). Some Plants Have Rapid Response With the […]

Plants move, even though they don’t have muscles. They can respond to touch even though they don’t have nerves, and to differences in light and dark without having eyes. The mechanisms that make this possible are known as tropisms, growth patterns in plants in response to environmental signals. Guided by plant hormones, tropisms allow plants the ability to “move” toward favorable conditions or away from unfavorable ones, which compensates in some ways for plants’ inability to actually move. Tropisms are directional — one example is a seedling growing toward the light — and the word is derived from the Greek word trope, which means “turn.” Guided By The Light Phototropism, the response to light, is the most familiar to people. We’ve all seen plants grow toward a bright window. The first plant hormone ever identified, auxin, (also known as indole-3-acetic acid or IAA) is responsible for this response. Auxin is […]

Ag economist Charlie Hall, who holds the Ellison Chair in International Floriculture at Texas A&M, is posting regular commentary on his new blog, “Making Cents Of Green Industry Economics.” Regarding the launch of the blog, Hall says, “We in the green industry are facing uncertain times over the course of the next 18 months. As a means of addressing the major i ssues facing the industry (e.g. potential recession, low pricing, reduced profitability, a maturing marketplace, water shortages, etc.), there is a need for careful economic analysies in order to make more informed managerial decisions regarding the strategies needed to survive and compete profitably.” Recent postings ponder how consumers will spend their tax rebates and how to combat falling consumer confidence. Check out the latest postings at http://ellisonchair.blogspot.com This is one you’ll want to bookmark or receive RSS feeds from.

Believe it or not, it was banking and currency issues that ended up putting bulb and perennial broker Langeveld International out of business. In December, due to the strength of the euro and a large overhead in Holland, Langeveld was moving its production and warehouse facilities to the United States while filing for bankruptcy in Holland. In the United States, Langeveld was owned by a capital investment company called Oryx capital in Chicago. Because the new entity had no credit history, vendors of the former Langeveld Bulb Co. needed bank guarantees for them to start shipping product again. According to sales representative Frank Riteco, Oryx and the banks were not processing guarantees quickly enough and Langeveld’s buyers in Holland advised growers not to ship product until they would receive the guarantees. “Our buyers didn’t want our growers to take the risk that they might never get paid for their product […]

Bell Nursery has expanded its market footprint into Virginia and North Carolina after acquiring Virginia Growers in Montpelier, Va. Virginia Growers was founded in 1985 by Neil Van Wingerden and has been owned and operated by Jonathan and Andy Van Wingerden and Brett Guthrie. The operation has more than 12 acres of outdoor production space and 325,000 square feet of greenhouse space. This marks the second big acquisition for Bell Nursery within the past two months. Based in Burtonsville, Md., Bell Nursery supplies plants to Home Depot and others in the mid-Atlantic region, as well as Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, after acquiring Ulery Greenhouse Co. in Springfield, Ohio. “We are very excited about this additional expansion in Virginia,” says, Gary Mangum of Bell Nursery. “Virginia Growers have built a strong reputation based on a quality and a well-run family business.” He adds the first difference consumers will notice […]

Richard Wilson of Colorama Wholesale Nursery in California chimes in on last week’s discussion related to the ability of manufacturers to set retail pricing. “On the subject of the article, ‘Can manufacturers establish retails?’ they are already doing so,” he says. “One of the big seed companies has sold some of its products to a major big box. They provided the retail with the cost breakdown going back to the grower. In this particular instance, the cost analysis came out to where we were still making a decent net profit. But who is to say in the future when they (big box) will tell you what you will charge them because XYZ seed/vegetative producer has sold them on a new ‘loaf of sliced bread’ and we have to live with the cost analysis of someone who might not know the entire picture, especially if it is a national program.” We […]

Pleasant View Gardens (PVG) in Loudon, N.H. has introduced a Mode Optimization Shipping Program to choose the best mode of delivery for each customer. Transportation logistics for all PVG orders are now determined by the company’s shipping department with customers’ needs in mind. “The transportation landscape has changed so much over the past few years,” says PVG’s President Henry Huntington. “FedEx has so many more options now, and with disposable pallet and carton options, there are so many ways to send and receive shipments. The idea with the Mode Optimization Shipping Program is to leave all our customers’ freight concerns up to us.” He says PVG will take into consideration each customer’s unique situations when determining the best way to ship. Are they close to an airport? Is ground transportation cheaper, easier and faster? When does it need to arrive? What are the weather conditions? “We’ll optimize each customer’s shipment […]

Can manufacturers establish retail pricing? A U.S. Supreme Court ruling has sparked an interesting discussion between grower Tom Culak of Good Earth Greenhouse in Lockport, Ill., and Jim Ralles, who represents a few horticultural manufacturers through ARI in Belmont, Calif. Culak told Ralles about the Supreme Court ruling over the summer that overturned a 96-year-old antitrust precedent, by stating manufacturers and distributors could agree with retailers on minimum prices for products. Before, manufacturers and distributors could only suggest retail prices or withhold products from noncomplying stores, according to Bloomberg News. The original 1911 decision in Dr. Miles vs. Park made vertical minimum price agreements illegal, regardless of the impact on competition. In the new decision split between the justices, who voted 5 to 4, the majority said price-floor agreements should be evaluated under the “rule of reason,” a legal doctrine that assesses restraints on trade by looking at the impact […]

Whenever there is a big Chapter 11 filing in the industry, one of the most unsettling aspects is the ripple effect that can hurt other companies. According to bankruptcy court records, Pike Nursery Holding LLC in Atlanta owes nearly $5.6 million to its 20 largest unsecured creditors. At least half of these companies are growers. At the very top of the list is Monrovia in California, which is owed $716,779. Next is Wight Nurseries in Atlanta, Ga., which is owed $689,289. On the greenhouse growing side, Wenke Greenhouse in Kalamazoo, Mich., and sister division Sunbelt Greenhouses in Douglas, Ga., are owed more than $500,000 for summer and fall crops. Owner Dennis Wenke says he met with officers of Pike last Monday before the bankruptcy filing, so he knew it was coming. Pike will be paying cash on delivery for poinsettias. “As of now, I’m not concerned about our poinsettia crop,” […]

Bell Nursery, based in Burtonsville, Md., announced that it has acquired Ulery Greenhouse Company in Springfield, Ohio. This marks an expansion for Bell Nursery, which currently supplies plants to Home Depot and others in the Mid-Atlantic region. Now Bell will be able to supply plants to retailers in the Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio area. “The Bell business model is well suited to an acquisition of a company like Ulery which is a well established and respected business in Central Ohio,” says Gary Mangum of Bell Nursery. “The Ulery physical plant as well as their strong employee base offers a great platform for business expansion. Quality is extremely important, and the Ulery name and heritage is associated with quality production.” “Today marks a new chapter for us,” said Bryan Ulery, “Bell Nursery is an outstanding company with great leadership, setting the standard for excellence in quality and service in our industry.” Bryan […]

Last week Glass Corner Greenhouses in Grand Rapids, Mich. announced it has shut down its operations and transferred its young plants business to Neal Mast & Son Greenhouses. In a letter to brokers and sales representatives dated Oct. 31, owners Rick and Joyce Mast wrote:” “It is with great sadness and deep regret we must inform you that Glass Corner Greenhouses will cease operations as of this date. Due to five years of continuous setbacks and extraordinary circumstances, we are unable to meet our debts and financial obligations, therefore forcing us to close our business. After exhausting all financial possibilities and investing everything both personally and professionally to save the company, it is impossible for us to remain in operation as Glass Corner Greenhouses.” Related to transferring the young plants business to Neal Mast & Son, the couple wrote: “Only the name is different; everything else you have been accustomed […]

Dave Walters, president of Walters Gardens in Zeeland, Mich., has retired after 40 years of service. Evan Elenbaas, who has been vice president of sales for 15 years, has been promoted to president, and industry veteran Niles Riese has joined Walters as the new vice president of sales. Dave Walters is the eldest son of Dennis Walters, who started the family business in 1946. He worked his way up from pulling weeds in the field to president of the perennial growing operation. In the office, he entered orders and made shipping labels on a manual typewriter and lead the transition to a “paperless” office in the 1990s. He started the first computer system used in the office and was the company’s first sales manager. In his retirement, he says he’s looking forward to spending more time with his wife and family. As the new president Elenbaas says he plans to […]

Grower Larry Boven of Boven’s Quality Plants in Kalamazoo, Mich., has sold his business to two enterprising young growers. The 14-acre Van Boven’s greenhouse facility was sold to grower employee Nirmal Shah, who grew up in India and came to this country to pursue a career in horticulture at Penn State University, earning his degree in horticulture and business. He joined Boven’s fresh out of school six years ago. The sale closed in August and Shah has changed the name of the business to Plants Unlimited. He specializes in growing blooming potted plants and hanging baskets and is a contract grower for Masterpiece Flower Co., which serves Meijer and Home Depot. The original seven-acre Boven’s facility six miles away was purchased by another grower employee, Kris Van de Streek. He is retaining the name Boven’s Quality Plants. Boven’s daughter, Laurie, still works in the office. Van de streek’s customers are […]

Paul Ecke III and his family were the first recipients of Community Resource Center’s (CRC) Community Star Award for more than 80 years of dedication to improving the lives of children and families in Encinitas, Calif., and beyond. The gala fundraiser held Sept. 29 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds Sports Club raised a record quarter million dollars for programs that shelter abused women and children, provide vital assistance to low-income families and help the homeless transition off the streets. “Paul Ecke III put the spotlight on CRC, sponsors invested in CRC at higher levels and individual supporters came through for us at the event,” says CRC Executive Director Laurin Pause. “This record fundraising level is a new benchmark for us and the positive impact it will have on people who need our help is incalculable.” Loren Nancarrow of 10News introduced the honoree, Paul Ecke III, who shared the award with […]